Hypocrisy is part of being human. The contradiction between what we actually are and our human idealism, gives rise to hypocrisy. This hypocrisy is fundamental; we all share it, without exception. Animals, having no idealism, have no hypocrisy.

When we use the word ‘hypocrisy’ for someone, we are actually talking about an additional level of deception, pretense, falsehood, which, by definition, would not be common to all people. The endemic and the nonessential hypocrisy share the same name; and therefore people miss out on the fact that fundamental hypocrisy is total in all humans. This unfortunately detracts from one’s ability to differentiate between one form and the other.

This is not a complete statement on the subject, on which I will deal at length a little later.